We are right to mourn the savage deaths of the journalists at Charlie Hebdo magazine offices in Paris yesterday. It was an attack on free speech, as Francois Hollande declared, and so an attack on democratic values. People wearing t-shirts or carrying signs saying ‘Je Suis Charlie’ are indicating their unambiguous support for the rights of journalists everywhere.
That said, we do pick and choose those whom we feel for. Did you know, for example, that last summer, between early July and late August, more than 2,100 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip? According to the UN, the vast majority of these Palestinians were innocent civilians. And did you know that at least 21,000 civilians died violent deaths in Afghanistan over the past ten years: that’s over 2,000 a year? And in Pakistan, NGOs believe somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000 civilians have died. In Iraq, the conservative body count says at last 133,000 civilians have been killed between the invasion and this year.
And now that you know, do you care? Do any of us care? If we did, we’d be out with placards and protests and every conceivable means to get our governments to do something about it. And if we don’t really care about those innocent people killed in those countries, why are we so upset about the deaths of 12 people in Paris?
Well as I said at the top, maybe because we see it as an assault on free speech and democracy. More probably, I suspect, it’s because the people killed were more like us. They weren’t people dressed in odd head-gear and long robes, they weren’t given to odd, wailing prayers. They were people who got up in the morning, drove or caught the bus/train to work, watched football, read books, had white faces and were easily identified with. Oh, and their deaths received and are receiving massive coverage by the media.
And yet if our grief was to be proportionate in terms of people unjustly and cruelly put to death, those killed in faraway places deserve our sympathy a thousand times more urgently. We’re right to sympathise with those affected by the horror in Paris yesterday. But as Wilfred Owen said in a different context: “What passing bell for those who die as cattle?”
Well Jude ..I know you are tussling with this one over several posts and of course there will be a variety of reactions throughout the world , depending on background and upbringing. I’ve already hoisted my colours up that imaginary flagpole and you always allow me my say..To me it’s always been about freedom of thought and speech.Also, as someone who writes and has an affinity with cartoonists I naturally think of those particular dead as part and parcel of “my tribe” of free- thinkers. That is not to disparage the deaths of anyone else in any other part of the world. To me a line has to be drawn in the sand between enlightened thought and barbaric brutality…and that’s no matter where that brutalism comes from.. This assault is the ultimate censorship , which i abhor and it will be found to have been done by fanatical young men .
These cartoonists poked fun at anything they thought needed lambasting .They didn’t simply target one religious grouping for example. They poked fun at everyone but only one grouping never sees the joke…A person’s belief should be strong enough in itself to be beyond parody .In this case the strange vengeful attack says everything about the irrational indoctrination of the assailants . Nothing should be allowed to encourage this kind of infantile madness otherwise we’ll end up living in some new fascist world where no one is allowed to think.
You make a fair point, Jude,but it comes across as being slightly disagreeable for the sake of it.
A high profile city like Paris is always going to be newsworthy in the light of a major event like this, a place that many of us have probably visited and can identify with more readily. It’s no coincidence, either, that other “big” nations like the USA have been quick to offer solidarity, hypocritical though it may be. Watched some of the coverage on tv5 last night and was impressed with John Kerry’s accomplished speech, en francais at sans interprete.
Colm – it’s not ‘being slightly disagreeable for the sake of it’. We’re talking about people’s lives being taken in a barbaric manner. I completely agree that the event has been ‘newsworthy’ – that’s my point. We consider those further away and unlike us as less newsworthy. Which is the old hierarchy of victims, and that’s wrong.
Jude
You very kindly left out there message: this was a revenge for Allah.
Yes I do think about people being killed, my main concern is ISRAEL.
France ignored those muslims at its peril, the Jews are now fleeing the country.
It (France) voted in the UN for a regognition of Palestine.
They will pay dearly for this, they will loose their Liberty freedom and free speech.
I am behind ISRAEL Gods chosen people, and when the battle line is drawn I know whose side I will be on.
They have already threatened the Irish with the same.
Norma
Norma,
Christians and Jews have slaughtered a great many more innocent Muslims around the world and such is no less outrageous than the 12 that pair of religious zealots murdered in Paris.
Do you have any comment on the fact, Zionists (so-called Jews) murdered at least 17 journalists last year in Gaza? Read details here http://www.imemc.org/article/68964 plus here http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/08/israel-attack-shajaiya-victims-survivors.html#
Your comment that Jews are ‘God’s chosen people’ makes me laugh more than I could adequately articulate in print form. I enjoy my free speech right to mock the lot of you whom believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and mythical God’s I believe were conjured by ancient philosophers – to me you’re all deluded fools fearful of having to ultimately face the nothingness of death!!! But, hey-ho, believe in what you believe if it gets you through your day 🙂
RUC
I have abbreviated your name, please
do not be offended, I just could not be bothered to get a pen. It would not let me copy and paste. I am sure the English version is much simpler like Rory McConkey etc etc :
Anyway the attachment you sent me could not be viewed, I would needed to subscribe, I seen enough to read the journalists came from Jordon Lebanon, Eygpt and all the other MUSLIMS countries. Ask my brother am I a liar, now who is kidding who here. You are deluded you have been compromised either that or antisemetic, I perso think its the latter.
Do not ever attempt to show me any of this nonsense again.
You tell em, Norma. I think you may find it’s Rory O’Connor you’re struggling with. Last King of Ireland, so he’s right up your Street with his Royal credentials. He’s also a fondness for sparring with women so again he’s right up your Street. Mind you he may just as well be posing as a more recent Rory O’Connor much revered in a song sometimes sung outside the Felons club, which causes the members inside much consternation. He’s always sending people links to sites or his Blog as he assumes everyone who holds a different view to himself stupid. Don’t be going near his Blog or you’ll be having ructions.
Norma, just because some fairytale names the Jews as Gods chosen people, that somehow gives them the right to slaughter innocent civilians and keep 1.5 million in confinement? Your “God” is a harsh and brutal one. The Jews, just like the Palestinians deserve a homeland but it’s impossible to to achieve that when The Chosen People keep stealing land!
people would be outraged at the killing of innocents in gaza iraq afghanistan and pakistan if they got the same media coverage its all about the way its packaged jude
Norma,
you talk about revenge but the very concept is what keeps hostilities festering; tit for tat murders and retaliatory attacks. I don’t agree with everything that appears in the print media but shooting journalists is far from the answer. Jude, you do make a fair point but it could also be applied to many other subjects, i guess, i suppose it’s back to the Orwellian concept of “some animals being more equal than others”. The mainstream media will always have its own agenda and people are greatly influenced by what they hear, see and read, in the main.
Tens of thousands of people die from cancer every year, but only when a family member, friend, or colleague falls victim to the disease do we become emotionally involved. Does that mean there is a hierarchy of cancer victims? Perhaps, but if so I would suggest it’s unavoidable. Family, friends and colleagues are always going to be more important to us than strangers. That’s the way our brains are hard-wired to respond. We may not have known the victims in Paris personally, but the proximity and the familiarity of the city evokes in us the same response.
My fear is for the ordinary Islamic people of France. Whilst we will expect them to take to the streets in a show of solidarity with their non-Muslim countrymen, we should also stand fore-square beside the innocent Muslim people, who must now be fearful of reprisals. Every faith group contains a small number of extremists. All reasonable, compassionate human beings must remain undaunted.
Freddie Mallin
Come in Freddie, come in Roger
You are worried about the MUSLIMS in France. The Jewish people this last year have been butchered, firebombed, children spat on. Synagogues attacked, by the same people you show concern for.
You sure are a strange breed.
You are spot on Jude, we in the west do not really think about the thousands upon thousands of people (yes, PEOPLE) who are slaughtered in far away mostly Muslim countries. How many of us were even interested enough in the killings of Pakistan children shot to death before Christmas? Actually, do any of us remember how many died that day? I don`t. Thirty? A hundred? The religious fanatics who murdered those people in Paris will be replaced by other fanatics and Britain and the USA and France and the other countries who stuck their noses into the middle east have to bear some responsibility. Take Britain, thirty years ago it was only Irish `terrorists` she had to worry about. The peace proces more or less sorted that out, for the time being anyway, what does Britain do then? Because Tony Blair wanted to suck up to the Christian fundaMENTAList Bush, he got his country`s working class youth entangled in an illegal war. Make no mistake about it, Islamic fascists will always be around but foreign policy is a huge contributing factor.
Another Jude,
You have such a short memory, or else a selective one. Either way it sucks.
Britain stuck her nose in…… It’s here that Am Ghobsmacht tells me off for whatabouttery, am I wrong or have I not taken on board what I read. The pope started sending armies to the Middle East during the crusades.
And to the Irish gentleman, with the tongue twister name, no offense, I strongly believe in God.
Judging by your name I would say you were of the catholic faith. Don’t worry when your time is up, you will be sending for the priest to give you absolution, your last rites.
One last point Palestine never ever existed, the Romans punished the Jews, by changing it’s name.
I am going to stop here, I have deleted my words, as I don’t wish to get into trouble. My name is not Ruth.
Norma,
I thought the Orange Order were a bit backward as seen in their paganistic wickerman celebrations of a seventeenth century skirmish at the Boyne but they are positively enlightened in comparison to you and your twisted memory. The crusades? As for my faith, yes I am a Catholic but don`t forget without the Catholic faith there would be no Protestant religion. You are every bit as anti Catholic as big Ruth.
Another Jude,
Whine your neck in, as they say in our house there is diarrhea coming out of your mouth, and your brain is constipated.
How do you know I am anti catholic, on what authority or right have you got to make such a bold statement .
There has been three PROTESTANTS girls married three brothers, well actually four if you count the one in Scotland, he turned and became protestant. Off the three two turned, they are long gone. I am the third one, I did not turn, my husband was a catholic when I fell in love with him, I am still in love with him he is still a catholic.
I have my own mind thoughts, and I am well liked in my catholic family. If I disagree with you, I will not go behind your back. I am honest trustworthy and frank.
My only regret in life is that I was not born a Jew.
For me to turn, is a huge effort and my husband would have to as well.
I remain steadfastly loyal to ISRAEL.
Maybe you should subscribing to my sites.
Norma, I have a lot of sympathy for Israel, I too believe the Jews are the chosen people. I am constantly at odds with my friends who detest Israel for it`s handling of the Palestinian problem. I support Israel`s right to exist. Put THAT in your pipe and smoke it!!!
ISRAEL Gods chosen people? Chosen to do what? Not to beleave in Christ or to kill all in Palestine?
What happened in Paris yesterday was Censorship Sans Frontiers.
So when one heard The Yawnaiste proclaiming today in that drawling, distinguished contralto of hers that ‘as she was against censorship it was up to newspapers to republish those CH cartoons of the Prophet it they so wished’ or turd-words to that effect, one thought one’s ears had for a moment, gone for a, erm Burton.
Gadzooks! the leader of the Labour Party opposed to the C-word?. The Party of Conor C. O’ B himself gone soft on censorship? Why, one almost choked on the Corn on the Cob which was at that moment wedged in one’s gob.
CCO’B aka Conor Scissorhands it was who used to boast of cutting out letters to the Editor of the Irish Press even as he wallowing in seeing his dream of a 31 Section County Ireland made flesh on his watch as Minister for Taut Control. Red of flag, pure white of intentions, blue of pencil.
The Irish Press, incidentally, is no longer with us.
Not so, with the robust Sunday Independent Cult the sombre faces of whose members were on view online today under the banner: ‘Sixty Seconds of Silent Solidarity’. In each hand was held the eloquent placard: ‘ Je suis Charlie’.
At first, Perkie’s inner sceptic with the septic throat, thought the reference was to a man called Manson and harrumphed accordingly. Moving swiftly if sorely on, he wondered at the way in which the French language had frog-marched its way into the newsroom of the English-language supremacists. Could he be reading ‘Je suis Charlatan’?
The same newsroom which never misses a half-chance to put the full brogue into the lingua franca of the leprechaun? But then, the truth came dropping slow. Of course, the French had been cancelled out by the Leprechaun.
‘Sixty Seconds of Silent Solidarity’: SS o SS. SSoSS. Sos being leprechaun for ….interval.
Clev-er.
Perkie’s inner apologist could only murmur his ‘mea culpas’ for lep-frogging to the wrong conclusion.
Just as others l-frogged ditto after reading Ms Eyelash O’Handup’s seminal piece on social media last Sunday week in the same organ..’It feels as if the world has gone mad lately’.
Now, just because Eyelash is the leprechaun for Lizzie some sourfaced cranks (who are always with us, alas) have tagged her with the nickname of the Lizzie Borden of Liberal Ireland:
Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 whacks
When she saw what she had done she gave her father 41.
Monsieur Warbeck, ca va sans dire, is not amongst them: he recognises Ms. Eyelash O’Handup for what she truly is, as the least tendentious of columnists, the exceptional one with no axe to grind, at all, at all.
All heil ! Eyelash the Disinterested.
Lend an ear, bend an eye: ‘The lunatics have taken over the social media asylum….Otherwise normal people,suddenly become monsters when they go online’
(The Devil’s Advocate: Esteemed Blogmeister, is there a vacancy for someone to play Mr. Hyde to your Dr. J?).
Stand by now for a particularly purple passage of prose in which EH, quotes, eh, another EH: ‘Eoghan Harris recently wrote a prescient piece on groupthink , in which he described the process whereby mobs begin to think and act as one person and outsiders are demonised and hounded’
Eh? Oh, yes, just a matter of : ‘Before you make up your mind, open it’.
Space being restricted, Perkie’s inner Rimski-Korsakov will now fly like a bumble bee down to the part of this superbly crafted essay in objectivity to: ‘and there there was the mass trolling of IRA rape victim Mairia Cahill. Far too much of which was cruelly orchestrated by supporters of Sinn Fein/IRA’.
And now, as a hors d’oeuvre for next Sunday’s eagerly and impatiently anticiapated detached episode:’Censorship doesn’t work online and even if it did, it would be wrong to to throw away the anarchic democratic openess of social media simply in order to put manners on a few socially indadequate dingbats. …best left them to stew in their own filth’.
Roll on Sunday.
Roll on ‘Je Suis Eyelash’.
Hope you don’t mind, Perkie, if we in NI change your cry to ‘Je Suis Backlash’.
Fadhb ar bith, Sherdy.
The Eyes have it !
Je suis sur.
One thing the shootings in Paris show is just how pathetic satirical magazines are in Britain. Private Eye? The Dandy and The Beano are more radical.
ANOTHER JUDE
That’s an absurd assumption to make, measuring the quality of a satirist by the extent of the the threat on their life. I’d be surprised if you even read the British Private Eye.
These alleged terrorists responsible for this Paris incident have to be the luckiest most stupid gunmen yet. How else can one explain why they left their I.D in the getaway car? In fact why would they take their ID with them? They also went the the wrong address initially and when they eventually went to the right door they had the good fortune to run into a member of staff of the newspaper who happened to be passing, and this person had the good manners to key code them in through the security door.
And finally after so many blunders, they manage to enter the premises and luckily for them the bodyguards tasked with protecting the editor of the said newspaper, somehow were not carrying any weapons of their own? Go figure.
P.s these idiots then managed to bungle their way through Paris and its renowned traffic, escaping the hot pursuit of the anti terrorist police. If I were a French citizen I would be demanding how my security forces managed to make these terrorists look like the your man outta the Bourne identity! Obviously those tasked with looking after security will request they need more resources and money to prevent this happening again blah blah blah.
I think your point about the Palestinians is well made, Jude.
At its root there is deep seated racism behind this. White is Right! seems to be the broad principle.
On a lower scale of horror, but nonetheless relevant to the free speech issue, the journalists recently imprisoned in Egypt by the regime there received little or no support from many of those now highly exercised about the issue of free speech.